On the Las Vegas Strip, blockbuster casinos burst out of the desert, billboards promise "hot babes," actual hot babes proffer complimentary drinks, and a million happy slot machines ring day and night. It’s loud and excessive, but, as the Project on Vegas demonstrates, the Strip is not a world apart. Combining written critique with more than one hundred photographs by Karen Klugman, Strip Cultures examines the politics of food and water, art and spectacle, entertainment and branding, body and sensory experience. In confronting the ordinary on America’s most famous four-mile stretch of pavement, the authors reveal how the Strip concentrates and magnifies the basic truths and practices of American culture where consumerism is the stuff of life, digital surveillance annuls the right to privacy, and nature—all but destroyed—is refashioned as an element of decor.
- Contents
- Introduction: Riding the Deuce
- 1. Framing Las Vegas “Reality”
- 2. Playing the Penny Slots
- 3. S.I.N. City
- 4. sH₂Ow
- 5. Bread and Circuses
- 6. The Whole World on a Plate
- 7. Gaming the Senses
- 8. Nature in Vegas: Cultivating the Brand
- 9. The Shipping Container Capital of the World
- 10. Ghosts of Weddings Past, Present, and Yet to Come
- 11. Memories: Made in China
- Epilogue: Sucker Bet
- Bibliography
- Index
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